Humiliation of JNU: the question of Nationalism and Patriotism

The whole incident of JNU was the battle of ideologies. The one with the encounter of the ideology of the ruling class and the ideology of the laymen; between ideology of the intellectuals and students vs. the ideology of the self proclaimed representatives of the majority. Many tried to formulate what it means to be a nationalist and an anti- national. The whole incident prompts us to ask the following questions to ourselves: Who is a traitor? Who is an anti-national? Who represents India? Who has the right to judge? Who has the right to put an academic institution under public trial and ostracise its students? Who has the right to humiliate and punish?

       Rabindranath Tagore in his essay about nationalism mentions that the earliest problem with the Indian civilisation was that of the race issue. The diverse population it encompasses give rise to different perspectives and opinions that must be respected under a democratic structure. Some ideas combine to resist another set of ideas through a democratic debate and give rise to discussions and re-evaluation. It's this value that would uplift a country's social and political culture. The idea of discussion here was nationalism and the section that resorted to violence instead of peaceful discourse goes against every fibre of a democratic set up, for strength doesn't decide who is right and who is wrong. Every struggle in this world where violence was used as a means to suppress an opinion or thought has always ended up showing us the cowardice of the oppressors. A pamphlet distributed in the hostel mess read "The lost rights are never regained by begging and by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggles- B.R Ambedkar". This exactly is the spirit of JNU. The student community constantly tried to define what it is to be patriotic and a positive nationalist.

"India has never had a real sense of nationalism. Even though from childhood I had been taught that the idolatry of Nation is almost better than reverence for God and humanity, I believe I have outgrown that teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will gain truly their India by fighting against that education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity". (Tagore)

       Death of Rohit Vemula, the constant humiliation that the lower castes face in educational institutions and the gender disparity shows how far we have crossed the boundaries of basic human rights. The truly uneducated ones (may not necessarily be illiterate) try to hold on to a history that has been spoon fed to them by the West and the upper caste. They understand India as Bharat Mata and nationalism as rejection of any opinion opposed to the opinion of the majority. For them nationalism is blind reverence to boundaries and religion and thus they fail to realise the emergence and transfusion of culture across blood and borders. The system established to divide population according to talent and culture to avoid collisions was turned into an immovable wall of caste system. Tagore says that the genius was turned into a skill and competition resulted in hierarchy.

"What she (India) failed to realize was that in human beings differences are not like the physical barriers of mountains, fixed forever ‐ they are fluid with life's flow, they are changing their courses and their shapes and volume. Therefore in her caste regulations India recognized differences, but not the mutability which is the law of life. In trying to avoid collisions she set up boundaries of immovable walls, thus giving to her numerous races the negative benefit of peace and order but not the positive opportunity of expansion and movement. She accepted nature where it produces diversity, but ignored it where it uses that diversity for its world‐game of   infinite permutations and combinations. She treated life in all truth where it is manifold, but insulted it where it is ever moving." (Tagore)

No human can be caged in caste structure or geographical boundaries. He thinks differently at different times and it's necessary to hear opinions of all the citizens of this country. The sudden urge to silence any opinion against the ''supposed'' opinion of the majority is the negative action towards the thought process that arise out of the permutation and combination Tagore talked about.

It matters to be patriotic to one's nation but there is nothing holy in being a nationalist. "When our nationalists talk about ideals, they forget that the basis of nationalism is wanting. The very people who are upholding these ideals are themselves the most conservative in their social practice." (Tagore)They reject diverse view points and aims for a single agenda. George Orwell in his Notes on Nationalism says how nationalism shouldn't be confused with patriotism.

"By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality." (Orwell)

According to this definition there is nothing wrong with being an anti- national because nationalist feeling can be a negative aspect too. "A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige" (Orwell). S/he rejects any thought that doesn't come under an umbrella with a suffix "-ian". Being either a positive or a negative nationalist he boosts his morale or attacks others. "At any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations" (Orwell). Orwell's observations about nationalism is apt for JNU issue when he says

"The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right". (Orwell)

All the forces against the JNU movement repeatedly showed an enthusiasm to prove their actions and opinions to be right. Though rationally JNU community and the intellectuals were on the stronger side, the "nationalists" aligned themselves with the majority in numbers.  Thus the ruling party dictated who the hero was and who the traitor was. The followers of ruling party decided to judge who should be punished and who should be oppressed. Media took the power to judge in their hands and put out verdicts to the open public to go with the opinion of the majority. Public humiliation of institution and its community on road, by posters, by death threats, by hate bashing and mockery through social media ensured further inflammation of the issue. It was a necessity for them to make this issue a nation-wide dilemma. They needed a villain to be the hero; an anti-national to be the biggest nationalist. Students were evicted from rented house, denied job opportunities, threatened outside university gates and "disciplined" by police force.

By defining Anglophobia and Anti- Semitics as Negative Nationalism, George Orwell argued the following characteristics to be the tell tale signs of a "nationalist": Obsession, Instability and Indifference to reality and truth. It gets interesting when one tries to apply the ideology of the ruling party to these characteristics.

Obsession: "No nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit. (Orwell)"Hence, they exert their power through newspapers, media and processions to grab the attention of the public. Regardless the truthfulness of their claims, they launch an attack against the teacher and student community of JNU and humiliate the institution in front of the nation. They manufacture doctored videos and false witness claims. They attack students, journalists and teachers outside the court, which should actually produce the judgement. They arrange press meetings to announce their verdicts and takes jab at the academic culture of the institution by calling students drug and sex addicts. They question the loyalty of the students who actually talk about democratic values and praise an ally who takes a hit at the JNU community.

Instability: "The intensity with which they are held does not prevent nationalist loyalties from being transferable" (Orwell). They create a world around them were women are denied rights and Godse is worshipped. Democratic values like healthy debates and peaceful talks sound good as long as they are proven right. "Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one's conduct" (Orwell).

Indifference to reality and truth: "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them... (Orwell)". They condemn the violence on national boundaries but make no remark about the violence at home and academic institutions. They can't tolerate difference of opinion but condones communal violence. They express the animadversion towards the actions of student community but don't raise a finger on the attack against them.

"Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events". (Orwell)

Control over the media and public ensure false news to spread and doctored videos to be propagated. The world is shown a situation far from the actual event. The witness becomes the culprit and government becomes the hero. The other side is not allowed to speak (like in Arnab Goswami's television debate) and gets tagged as terrorists and anti- nationals.

Who actually is a nationalist? How much can we trust nationalism?

"To begin with, one has no right to assume that everyone, or even every intellectual, is infected by nationalism. Secondly, nationalism can be intermittent and limited. An intelligent man may half succumb to a belief which he knows to be absurd, and he may keep it out of his mind for long periods, only reverting to it in moments of anger or sentimentality, or when he is certain that no important issues are involved. Thirdly, a nationalistic creed may be adopted in good faith from non-nationalistic motives. Fourthly, several kinds of nationalism, even kinds that cancel out, can coexist in the same person." (Orwell)

It's very difficult to define a nation, and one wonders how the ruling party could easily define who was an anti- nationalist. Nation and Nationalism are two different concepts. Antony Smith's definition of a nation  as "named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths, and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members" (Smith 14) was questioned later by Yael Tamir for mixing together  "reasons for the emergence of a nation (a shared historic territory, a common economy, and a common legal system) with the results (sharing myths and historical memories)" (Tamir 424). Tamir defined nation as a "community whose members share feelings of fraternity, substantial distinctiveness, and exclusivity, as well as beliefs in a common ancestry and continuous genealogy" (Tamir 425) but the scholar Lowell W Barrington argues that "While (this is) a good definition of an ethnic group, the lack of reference to the idea of territorial self- determination and the difficulty in fitting nations based on political rather than ethnic identity into this conception of nation make this definition unusable" (Barrington). It's this very territorial self determination Kashmiri students were discussing about during the whole JNU row. Ghia Nodia argues that a nation consists of people organised around the idea of self determination but the issue is whether the State end up determining everything. The idea of territory is crucial to a nation and hence the discussion and debates around it is all the more relevant. A plat form to discuss such issue is a necessity. JNU for providing a platform for democratic discussion became the prey to the attack of nationalists. The irony is too much to handle! Anything that questions the territory and the control over it becomes a sensitive and taboo issue. Any slight remark of criticism renders one an anti-national. Nation is not synonymous with Government. Majority doesn't necessarily mean the best opinion. It's this gap that needs to be filled with healthy discourse. Nationalism based on ideas doesn't necessarily define it according to Alexander Motyl. "Because nationalism is based on ideas-such as the nation- state, self-determination, national identity, and national superiority- actions based on these ideas cannot be the basis for a definition of nationalism, unless we make the absurd assumption that beliefs invariably translate automatically into behaviour" (Motyl 311). The ruling party that controls the territory expects everyone within the territory to be loyal to their claims.

"This does not mean, however, that the boundaries are set easily. The development of successful claims over boundaries may involve struggles with another group, serious struggles within the nation over competing definitions of the territorial and membership boundaries, and difficulty in transmitting the ideas of national membership boundaries to the masses". (Barrington)

It's this very basic discussion that was curtailed with the JNU issue. Humiliation ensured no further discussion outside the university gates. The more engaging conversations happened within JNU and outside India were thousands of intellectuals and other student communities from all over the world came in support of JNU. The force outside could easily penetrate through the multiple boundaries constructed by the ruling class. 

As a conclusion we must observe what Barrington proposes:

"Roskin and Berry, for example, discuss nationalism as "an exaggerated sense of the greatness and unity of one's people". Unity is important, and a sense of greatness may be part of a particular national identity. But it is not a necessary feature of nationalism". (Barrington)

It's the unity that JNU community is also striving for. All citizens of this country must be equally satisfied and should gain same rights. Upper caste and lower caste should join at academic institutions and give rise to an ideology of equality of race, caste, religion and gender. By evaluating the chances for separation we must strengthen the bond of a nation. The educational institutions are the best place for conversation to be initiated and implemented. By curtailing the freedom of students we create a generation that got discouraged to think and act upon a positive ideology they believed in.  It's not by act and culture of violence and silencing that must be provided to the coming generation who would have even more serious issues to discuss about. It's the path of tolerance and democracy that should put India in the world map for positive reasons.

Bibliography

·        Barrington, Lowell W. ""Nation" and "Nationalism": The Misuse of Key Concepts in Political Science." Political Science and Politics (1997): 712- 716.

·        Motyl, Alexander. Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality: Coming to Grips with Nationalism in the USSR. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

·        Nodia, Ghia. Nationalism and Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

·        Orwell, George. "Works of George Orwell." 1945. 22 March 2016 <http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat>.

·        Smith, Antony. National Identity. London: Penguin Publishers, 1991.

·        Tagore, Rabindranath. Complete Works of Rabindranath Tagore. 22 June 2010. 16 March 2016 <http://tagoreweb.in>.

·        Tamir, Yael. The Enigma of Nationalism. New York: World Politics, 1995.